Oh, this is classic, Golden Age lute list stuff here! Hah!!!!!! DR
On Feb 17, 2009, at 10:42 PM, alexander wrote: > No one seems to object, and the talk continues as if the very > people that gave us all the amazing instruments we play, were > totally ignorant as far as the oh, so stupid "tune almost to the > breaking point" line goes. The simple truth of the matter is that > any string made of the same material will break at the same pitch, > no matter its' diameter, as long as the string length is the same. > Some here still remember Eph Segerman?.. > "The stress on the string (represented by S) is the tension divided by > the cross-sectional area, so S=T/A. The tensile strength of a material > is defined as the stress at breaking (which we can represent by SB). > Then the breaking frequency, represented by fB becomes: fB = > (1/2L)sqrt(SB/ï²). This demonstrates that the breaking pitch is > inversely proportional to the string stop." > In the formula, (as can not be seen here, unfortunately) the invert > relation is only between the pitch, length and the breaking point > stress. Diameter plays no role. All this means a very simple truth > - all the instruments of the same mensura tuned close to the > breaking point of a given material, will have the same pitch, to > the same degree as an organ pipe of the same length and diameter > will produce the same pitch, be it in France or England. I hazard > to say that, among professionals who used "no rotten strings" and > preferred particular strings made by the same makers and even at > particular time of the year, the pitch standard was no worse then > nowadays. > alexander > > On Tue, 17 Feb 2009 18:29:32 -0800 > howard posner <[email protected]> wrote: > >> On Feb 17, 2009, at 5:43 PM, [email protected] wrote: >> >>> How many of us really follow this "fundamental of lute stringing" >>> today? We tune our instruments to arbitrarily agreed upon pitches >>> like 415, 392, 440 etc because its practical. If we were to do the >>> truly historical thing, Jeff's G lute would be at 449, Joe's at >>> 412, Tina's at 463 and Bill's at 398. >> >> That wouldn't have worked in 1610 either. They all had to use an >> agreed pitch if they were going to play together, unless they were >> into the whole John Cage thing. >> >> >> -- >> >> To get on or off this list see list information at >> http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html > > [email protected] --
